The Bear & Badger Intimidating Book Club: Clarissa by Samuel Richardson, schedule in OP - The Bear and Badger

Blue Swirl

Wondering if I should copy out the list of characters from my version, it really helped keep track of who's who, especially when people start throwing Russian nicknames into the mix.

davyK

The Penguin version I'm reading is : Translation by Richard Peavar and Larissa Volokhonsky, 1992.

Russian names can be hard to follow - paternal and maternal surnames and pet first names can throw you for a loop sometimes.

My copy has a list of them in the front but I got on OK as each section tends to stick with a small number of characters.

Wookienopants

Found a wonderful wood near my house that has a gorgeous picnic area with benches in a clearing.

I'm going to take the book and do some reading there during lunch breaks

Stopharage

I picked up this version, translation by Michael Katz. Had a look around for favoured translations and asked the Head of English at my place and that was the preferred option.

Found the foreword was pretty useful as my Russian history knowledge is fairly non-existent.

Thought I'd bounce off this but enjoying it so far, despite the denseness. Thematically, the first 3 chapters are concerned with 3 different characters selling to survive and the rampant desperation that was rife in society at the time. Going to have a feel good title on the go at the same time as I can imagine there's a fair bit of darkness ahead.

Blue Swirl

Stopharage wrote:

Going to have a feel good title on the go at the same time as I can imagine there's a fair bit of darkness ahead.

Shit gets dark, I can confirm.

davyK

The poverty on show in this book is what disturbed me most. The conditions in which people lived.

LivDiv

And yet the description of his flat has distinct East London vibes.

Blue Swirl

His flat would easily be two grand a month in London these days. A sofa and a chest? Luxury. Sure, you can't stand up straight, but you can't have everything.

davyK

It's the accomodation that has people walking through your room to get access to theirs. The descriptions of the conditions of the rooms themselves cause me to picture such Dickensian decrepitude.

LivDiv

It reminded me of my Granny's description of the Glasgow tenements she grew up in.

Blue Swirl

davyK wrote:

It's the accomodation that has people walking through your room to get access to theirs. The descriptions of the conditions of the rooms themselves cause me to picture such Dickensian decrepitude.

Yeah, there's a lot of subletting the sublets, it gets almost like fractal accommodations.

davyK

LivDiv wrote:

It reminded me of my Granny's description of the Glasgow tenements she grew up in.

The way things are going some could be heading back to that.

LivDiv

Yeah not far off.
Definitely read stories of people living in one room to conserve heat. Also people putting up tents in the living room. Miserable.

davyK

My mother remembers a tenement building in which there was no toilet and they all used one which was shared with the next door pub. She was a wee girl but was afraid to even walk past that building. There were some windows missing etc. Must have been among the last in Belfast.

Fucking appalling. That's unfettered capitalism for you.

Stopharage

davyK wrote:

The poverty on show in this book is what disturbed me most. The conditions in which people lived.

It's already reminding me of Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. That's well worth a read for those who haven't given it a go before.

EvilRedEye

Just a reminder that this week's reading is Part I Chapters IV-VII (i.e. we're reading to the end of Part I). If you want to read at a gentle pace of a chapter per day then you need to start today.

nick_md

Stopharage wrote:

davyK wrote:

The poverty on show in this book is what disturbed me most. The conditions in which people lived.

It's already reminding me of Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. That's well worth a read for those who haven't given it a go before.

Lurking in this thread as I've read C&P and found it great, one of the few classics I've actually finished, but also want to second this - Down & Out in P&L is a great read.

LivDiv

Gonna have to do some reading tonight, last chance for me before Monday.
I've been distracted by Papillon.

monkey

LivDiv wrote:

My copy of C&P is here.
Does the introduction need to be read?

Bit late on this but that’s always tricky with this sort of thing. I went through a phase of trying to tackle some of the classics. Sometimes you really need the intro to get the most out of the book (or even understand what’s going on). But then they’re also usually spoiler-heavy which can, erm, spoil it.

Ulysses is a joke. The intro for that was talking about a passage where one character waves a cigar at another character which references the Odyssey where Odysseus waves a torch at a Cyclops, one of multiple references to that story. How do you even begin with that? I’ve read the first hundred pages four or five times then always bounce off. One day.

monkey

C&P is one of my favourite books though. The thing people are picking up on here, the descriptions of the squalor and the city, make it completely real. And it reads a bit like the compulsive, one-more-chapter, style of an airport crime thriller (which is meant as a compliment).

davyK

Short chapters help me - I like having natural breaks. It was serialised at first over 12 months and I suppose that's why it is like that. Many of the big Russian novels, like Dickens' are the same. Anna Karenina was serialised for example and it has lots of shorter chapters. I makes these monolithic blocks of pages far more approachable.

davyK

Oh - and I keep calling it Sin and Punishment.

Wookienopants

I'll start tonight. I'm gonna try and go get some lunchtime reading done in the woods tomorrow too.

JonB

I've only just caught up with the first week's target. I'll need to get a copy on my tablet, I think, because the book I've got is too small, with tiny, cramped text. I can't focus on it after a long day, and it was only last night when my eyes were less tired that I got through a couple of chapters.

That's some trio of chapters though. Three different stories in effect, which tell us everything we need to know about the time, and how R relates to it.

EvilRedEye

I keep imagining Wookie settling down in the woods with this as a treat for his mental health and just being, like, "Oh."

EvilRedEye

"Oh, it's a horsey, I bet my kids would love this bit—Oh."

Wookienopants

I haven't had a single chance to get away and read in peace.
Yesterday I was left home alone with baby Felix, he fell asleep for 20 minutes so I managed to read the first half of the first chapter.
Otherwise I've not had any time on my own where I've not had cooking or cleaning or washing to do.

I'm exhausted

Blue Swirl

davyK wrote:

Oh - and I keep calling it Sin and Punishment.

We can save it for the intimidating game club.

LivDiv

EvilRedEye wrote:

"Oh, it's a horsey, I bet my kids would love this bit—Oh."

That was a bleak evening's read.
When we said difficult I wasn't expecting that.

That last chapter in this part was just brilliant. Full of tension.

Somehow I still quite like R though. I'm still rooting for him.

davyK

I'm behind - too much Super Meat Boy. But I'll catch up.

The melodramatic prose can be hard work sometimes. But that goes with the times. Dickens is the same. The drunk's wailing was becoming a pain in the arse but that's likely the point. It's a good insight into the plight of an addict.

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